Pearl knew she shouldn’t have been eavesdropping. She clasped her hands against the metal door, her ears seemingly glued to it.
She exhaled quietly, closing her eyes. She knew how much Rose cared about the planet and its inhabitants, though she couldn’t see why. There were lots of planets with functioning kindergartens on them that once had other life forms on it. What was so different on Earth?
“Pink Diamond, we need to look at this rationally. The Geode System —”
“Empty words,” Rose said. “We can send a red-eye into them. You know I’m the only Gem with light cannons.”
“That doesn’t matter!” Blue diamond shouted, and Pearl imagined her Blue form literally flying up from her seat. “You know that Cinnabar’s been developing weapons!”
“I have to say I’m on Pink’s side here, Lazuli… Cinnabar is under an agreement,” Yellow Diamond said.
“Look how far that’s gotten us,” Blue huffed. “Pink, look at it like this. Cinnabar’s going to use those weapons. Not might. Will. We need to destroy the system, and Quartzes are the only way to do it.”
There was a silence, Pearl hearing only Rose’s soft, exasperated sigh. She twisted her hair, waiting for what was going to happen next. Rose was going to win. She’d throw up an argument that win her the debate, and her irrational love for the Crystal system would be understood, and agreed on. She just waited.
It felt like moments before it wasn’t Rose, the Pink Diamond, but White Diamond, the leader of Homeworld. “I think that Blue is right. We should take Cinnabar’s threats as real. It would be… almost traitorous not to,” White diamond continued.
Pearl shuddered, her teeth baring. They couldn’t be insinuating…
Silence again. Pearl’s shoulders tensed until she could have sworn she was reeling into them. They could take away her diamond title. Would she… would she risk it?
“Fine then,” Rose said. “I was just hoping we could spare such a… vibrant planet…”
“In times like these, Pink Diamond, we need all the gems we can get.” There was a pause, before White snapped, “No, Yellow, stuffing shattered gems into Charmelan’s core to destroy the planet is costly and too experimental.” She paused again. “No.”
Pearl inched away from the door. The meeting would end at any minute. She slowly walked down the corridor until she was at a short distance from the door. She started walking towards the door to make it look like she was just getting around to it. A vapid, average pearl looking for her mistress.
She barely made out the words, “Meeting dismissed,” and started giving her stride a dancing look to it. She glanced around, trying to loosen her shoulders. She put a smile on her face and threw the lock of hair she had been twirling behind her ears. She almost felt like she could’ve been a perfect Pearl.
The door swung open, and Pearl stood calmly and politely as three gems filed out. First, Yellow diamond, a Titanite with two forward-aimed points sticking out of the back of her head. Her cat-like eyes glanced over Pearl once before sniffing with disinterest. Pearl wilted only a bit. Next was Blue Diamond, one of the few Lapis Lazuli gems there really were. She had to look up to see Pearl, and lingered a few moments. Pearl noticed the small points of water hanging off of her back, ready to become wings at any given moment. She smiled more forcefully. “Is Pink Diamond coming out yet?” she asked briskly.
Lapis gave a blink and flicked her head behind her before stalking off in the opposite direction of Yellow.
Rose walked through the doorway slowly, giving a forlorn glance behind the door. “They wouldn’t understand,” she said quietly before turning to Pearl.
Pearl stood up taller and smiled hard enough she felt that her cheeks were going to fall off. “So,” she said slowly, “Did the meeting go well?” She swayed her hips, her long, veil-like skirt falling along with her.
Rose gave a smile, a real one. Pearl couldn’t help but notice her eyes twinkle like they had stars in them. She laughed and patted Pearl’s shoulder like she would a friend. Pearl brightened a bit. “Not really,” she said. “I guess you would know that.”
Pearl jumped back, surprised. Rose’s smile faltered. “I’m serious, Pearl. This could get you harvested, or worse.”
Pearl’s heart sank to her stomach at the thought of it, and she felt her smile loosen.
“I would never do that to you, but you have to be careful. They might force you to become a kindergarten worker on Earth,” she said and then sighed. “Just… Be careful, okay? I have to do some things.” She started walking off, her large hand leaving Pearl’s shoulder. She turned around, her dress swinging with her. “Meet me in our quarters.” She gave a smile and turned away to continue walking in the direction Lapis had went in.
Pearl turned to see that nobody was around before sighing and loosening her shoulders and face. She narrowed her eyes a bit. There. She then leaned against the wall, and imagined what sort of hell her life could’ve been if Rose had been demoted.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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Original Text:
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,805 Reviews
Hello! I don't know what this is a fan-fic of so I'm going in a bit blind but hopefully I can still give some helpful comments on plot/ style!
I think a 'but' between these two sentences would really improve the flow.Specifics
1.
2. It would be nice to have a little more room setting as the dialogue starts to pile up which I realise is hard since we're following Pearl and she's eavesdropping. Maybe the point of view character should actually be someone in the room or could there be a window or a crack in the door for Pearl to be watching through?
3. This is something I'm really guilty of as well but just is a word which should hardly ever be used because it's a filler word and actually slows the flow of the writing down rather than emphasising anything or building atmosphere. It's good in dialogue but not so much elsewhere.
4. The phrase 'had went in' is a little awkward. Perhaps 'had left in' or 'the direction Lapis took'.
Overall
Part of me wants to say you're trying to introduce too many characters so early on, though of course it will be easier for those who are already familiar with them so that possibly works. I liked the end of this chapter as it flowed better and there were some descriptions in there and a better sense of clarity. The beginning didn't work for me. Starting a book with your main character unable to see what's happening in the action is difficult and you need to focus more strongly on describing what she hears to make to work. How does she differentiate between their voices? Does she hear the sound of feet scraping as people pace or get up and out of their chair? Setting is really important so try to give us that using the remaining senses instead.
I may take a look at the next part of this tomorrow since I can see you have it up. Best of luck!
~Heather
Hello, I am here to review.
Okay, so this is a good prologue which already starts introducing us to the characters, and already we start noticing some traits in your character's behavior. Also, you start in the middle of something, and we notice that something is about to go down, so that is a good way to hook your reader.
However, there are some things I would like to point out. First of all, I feel that you could give us more detail into what the characters actually are. We understand they are not humans, at least, not all of them, but the rest, we really have no information on. Now, this is probably something that you'll develop more in your next chapters, but you could still maybe give some more explanation about the different life forms that we meet in this prologue. For example, we get that there are different Gems (which is a rank, I suppose), but are all Gems some sort of humanoid composed of minerals? Or are Gems a race from some other planet?
Then, we understand that Pearl and Rose must be some of the main characters. You give a slight description about Pearl, but it is still unclear what Rose is. If all Gems are minerals, would Rose be a ruby? Dolomite? Some insight on what are possibly your main characters might make the reader understand better. Although I guess we will learn more about the characters and understand this universe better as the story goes on.
I also have a few things to say about the actual writing.
Here, you are missing a word. I imagine you wanted to say:
Now, this sentence does not make much sense:
Maybe if you wrote [i[the leader of Homeworld, who spoke.[/i] In any case, there is a verb missing here, because you speak about White Diamond (the subject) but you do not say what he does (the missing verb).
As for this sentence:
maybe the term points of water makes sense once we know more about how your universe works, but otherwise, you might have meant to say drops of water.
The word briskly doesn't feel write for a verb such as asked. It would probably sound better if you wrote asked suddenly, or something along those lines.
Last thing I want to say about spelling is, when you talk about Gems, whether Gem is a rank or a species, the G is capitalized. Same goes for Pearl, whether you are talking about the name or about the species. You can ignore this, of course, if you are speaking about actual gems or pearls, but in that case, they would not have a life and would probably not fit like this in your story. So unlike what you did, which is capitalizing some words and not the others, capitalize all of them when you are speaking of names or species or races.
Overall, this was a very good prologue to your story, and I am curious to know what happens as the story continues. What is going to happen to Earth?!
Good job, and keep on writing! I hope this helped.